After a very painful decision, I left my old guild and joined a new guild,
Winter's Light. I felt rather a stranger in a strange land. I knew one
person fairly well, and had grouped with a few others, but for the most part
everyone was an unknown entity to me. In an effort to figure out more about
these people, I perused the guild boards.
One message was a somewhat scathing missive from one of the guild's senior
members, talking about things people should be doing to better themselves
instead of being lazy. This was before PoP. One of the things he mentioned
was equipment - that there was no reason to be under-equipped. At the very
least, there was no good reason not to have Heraldic Armor to cover your
weaknesses.
Heraldic, hmm.
So I checked Allakhazam's. I had somehow labored under the impression that
there was no Heraldic armor for worshippers of Rodcet Nife, but I was wrong.
I checked the stats on the various pieces of Salubrious Heraldic armor, and
some of it was quite nice. Certainly an upgrade for myself. I could
definitely use the belt - AC 19, WIS 10, HP 40, MANA 40. Finding a decent
belt had been a problem for me - I'm human, so I can't use the Belt of the
Cenobite. I also decided the greaves wouldn't be half-bad. I took a look
at what would be required to make those. Man, was it complicated. The
combine took several sub-combines, and each of those sub-combines had
sub-combines. Torturously I bore through the list of ingredients and, after
a week of scrounging around, finally had everything I needed to have someone
make a girdle and a greaves for me. So, full of anticipation, I went to the
Bazaar and /auc'd "Want to hire a human GM smith to combine some Heraldic
armor, please."
Evidently human GM smiths weren't *quite* as prolific as I'd thought. I
auctioned for two days, and only got a couple of "Soandso is a human GM
smith, try him." Soandso was never on, alas. I asked in our guild if we
had a human GM smith, and was given the name of one of our guildmembers.
Excited again, I posted on the web board, asking this guild member if he
could make me some heraldic. His response - "Sure, if I ever play this
stupid game again." Not encouraging.
After another week of auctioning and not getting so much as a nibble, I
finally came to a decision, born out of frustration more than anything else.
If I couldn't *find* a human GM smith, I'd *become* one!
I had a minor head start from working on my Coldain Shawl. Quickly I went
to work. I had 50,000pp in the bank from having just sold a couple of
pieces of upgraded equipment, which seemed like it would be enough. I went
to EQTraders.com and checked the smithing section. An easy path to begin
with. I delved right into banded armor, which was easy. Then I moved on to
ornate armor
You want to know what takes the longest time in tradeskilling? The setup.
Finding the vendors, buying the stuff, doing the sub-combines... it takes a
good while to just to set up for the final combine where a skill-up is
possible. In this, though, I was fortunate to be a cleric of Rodcet Nife.
I had a Faithstone of Life, a player-made item with a right-click gate to
Qeynos. When I'd first purchased it, it seemed almost worthless since I
very seldom had a need to go to Qeynos. Its use had been limited to "Oops,
forgot to buy some dots, brb," /bind /faithstone /buy dots /gate back.
Now, however, it provided me with easy access to Qeynos and all of the
tradeskilling supplies to be found there. Plus it allowed me quick and easy
access to the Qeynos cultural forge, where all the human heraldic combines
were done. Suddenly the 10K I had dropped on the Faithstone seemed
well-spent (and yeah, I bought the Faithstone when they were new and the
price was high... I've always been the "instant gratification" type). All
the gems and patterns needed for ornate armor were close at hand, so I set
to work.
I was keeping my guild up-to-date on my progress, and my guild leader told
me to get a Hammer of the Ironfrost from XTC - they usually had problems
even giving this hammer away when it dropped. Evidently this nifty little
item would add 15% to my smithing skill. Cool - I just need to get a group
together to farm the four-armed guys in Maiden's Eye. Easy! Uh, no Monual,
not Xin Thall Centiens, Xerkizh the Creator, the mob in Ssra that requires a
raiding force to kill. D'oh! Oh well... it gave me something to hope for
in our Ssra raids.
During one of my Ornate forays, the vendor ran out of ore - they only have a
limited number of high-quality ore. There is a quest you can do to get them
to restock their store. I needed to find four pieces of unrefined ore in
SolA. Easy for a 61 cleric!
I got the no-drop box from the vendor and got a port to Lavastorm. I
summoned my level 58 hammer (hadn't gotten the level 60 hammer yet) and
memmed Yaulp V. I zoned into SolA - and ran smack dab into a train of about
eight goblins. No problem - I summoned my pet and waded in with my hammer.
It took a couple of minutes, but soon I was surrounded by a pile of corpses.
You have no idea what that feels like... my first char was a wizard, my
second was Monual. At my best I could only handle one or two mobs at a time
with melee. To be able to lay waste to an entire train using nothing but
melee... that was a heady feeling. OK, so they were only level 20 greenies,
but still... even level 20's were annoying to melee before the new hammer
spells.
I took time to decide on a set of spells... Root, Pet, Nuke, Heals, Yaulp...
all good. I then began merrily killing goblins. I got a piece of unrefined
ore and several pieces of refined ore. I wasn't *exactly* a killing machine,
but I was doing okay.
As an experiment, I memmed an AoE nuke and made myself a small train of
about six mobs. I then cast the AoE nuke, and killed most of them in one go.
The rest only had a sliver of health and were easily polished off by my pet.
Hey-hey! *This* was going to make life *much* easier. So this time I created
a big train - got twenty mobs around me. It was only when I started to cast
my AoE nuke that I saw a flaw in my plan. I had no problems getting my
slow-casting AoE spell off when only six mobs were beating on me. With 20, I
was bucking long odds. I kept getting interrupted, and now I suddenly
realized that I was very deep in SolA with no real idea of how to get back
to the zone line. I cast DB, ran blindly down the tunnels trying to put some
distance between me and the mobs. Finally I found a quiet corner and quickly
cast Gate. Oops... I had swapped out Gate for the AoE nuke. Oh, hi guys.
Say, remember when I was trying to kill you all? Can we just let bygones be
bygones?
LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...
Back in the Nexus I pondered my options. I checked up on my friends who were
online, but I could see by a /who that they were in XP zones and I didn't
want to bother them. And it would be embarrassing in the extreme to ask for
help from my guild to do a CR in *SolA*. With a sigh I went to the bank and
withdrew some plat, bought a couple of dots, Aego'd myself, summoned a
hammer, bought a KEI, and bought a gate back to LS.
I looked around the area. I found that if I quickly ran by goblins, they
wouldn't always aggro me. Sometimes they would, and then I'd have to kill
them. I wandered all around the area, trying to find exactly where I died. I
honestly had no clue. Didn't occur to me to get a /loc while I was dying. I
went from place to place, killing the occasional goblin (got another piece
of unrefined ore while doing so), and generally feeling quite sheepish about
the predicament I'd gotten myself into. I kept mashing my corpse key and
kept seeing "Your corpse is too far away to summon". I meandered around the
maze of twisty little passageways, all different, for about half an hour
when I suddenly realized I was no longer getting the "too far away" message.
I looked down at my feet and there was my corpse, which I believe I had been
dragging for about a minute without realizing it.
With no small feeling of relief I looted and rezzed myself. I then found my
way back to the zone line and decided to call it a night. As it turned out,
there was a patch that night and the ore vendor was replenished, so it was
all for naught.
One thing that particular patch did was make smithing easier to get
skill-ups in. This was good news for me. I got up to 155 by using Ornate,
buying lots of silver and gold bars and low-cost gems. The cost was offset
a bit once when I was buying ore. I noticed that the vendor had a gem for
sale. I clicked on it, and the vendor told me, "That will be 147 platinum
for that Flawless Diamond." I blinked, then blinked again. I asked in
/guildsay if Flawless Diamonds were what were needed for tank SS and Thurg
quested breastplates. I was assured they were. I bought it from the vendor
and sold it in the bazaar for 3K. That neatly offset most of my losses
making Ornate that day. I can't help but wonder why someone sold it that
vendor - in Qeynos, no less, not exactly a zone people go to sell vendor
trash. I wonder if that someone was attempting to do a
character-to-character transfer by themselves, and decided that the ore
vendor, who is on the second floor of a building, would be a nice
out-of-the-way place to hold it. If that's the case, I feel slightly
guilty. But only slightly - there are much better ways to transfer items,
and anyway, it might truly have been someone selling something they didn't
want and had no idea how valuable the diamond was on the open market.
Anyway, it was now time for me to work on Fine Steel Plate. This involved
making oodles and oodles of folded steel plates. I discovered something
good, though: there were vendors in the Bazaar that sold medium-quality ore
as well as water flasks and plate molds. This was very good news as there
are no weight restrictions in the Bazaar. So I withdrew my entire stash of
42K from the bank and bought lots of ore. I also bought lots and lots of
leather padding from player vendors, making some tailors very happy I'm
sure.
One advantage Qeynos had over the Bazaar is that Qeynos is virtually
deserted and has lots of forges. There's just the one in the bazaar, and at
one point when I left the forge to resupply, I came back to find that
someone else had taken it over. No problem, though: I just used my
Faithstone of Life to teleport to Qeynos to continue my smithing.
Anyone see the problem I was about to face? Hmm? I'll give you a minute.
Yes, it's the 40K plat I had on me at the time. Fortunately I could move,
just veeeeerrrrrrrryyyyy sllllllooooowwwwwlllllyyyy. I made a bee-line
(well, a slug-line) to the bank and deposited my plat. While I was still
weighted down with ore, it was at least manageable.
I continued making plate armor and selling it to vendors. They fetched more
than I thought they would: helmets sold for 42 plat, breastplates for 84. At
least I was recouping some of the plat I was pouring into this endeavor. No
way I'd be able to sell this junk to players - who wants a heavy 19AC
breastplate with no stats?
While I was clicking merrily away on my smithing, my guild went to Fear to
take down Cazic-Thule. After a while they killed him and he dropped a really
really nice head item - a Halo of Enlightenment. A nice uber piece of
equipment - and they couldn't give the thing away. Guild chat was filled
with, "Don't any clerics want this?" Finally they awarded it to someone,
and I was left with vague regrets. There was a price I was paying for
building up my smithing that goes far beyond the mere cost of components.
I got my smithing up to 188. I noticed that the higher it got, the more
difficult it became to raise, making me fearful of what 200 to 250 would be
like. Fortunately I wouldn't need to get it all the way to 250; I purchased
a tinkered geerlock that added five percent to smithing, meaning that I only
needed to get to 240 smithing.
Anyway, I needed to start by getting above 188. There were a few paths
opened to me. One was Mistletoe Sickles. The advantage of these was that
each of the items could be store bought. However, they were expensive - one
person posted how he used Mistletoe Sickles to get from 188 to 243. It cost
him 600,000pp. That was a bit more than I could spend. =) Plus I needed a
cleric of Tunare to imbue hundreds of emeralds for me. I flirted with the
idea of two-boxing a Tunare cleric, but decided against it. One account is
enough for now.
Another option is Acrylia armor. This involves farming ore, farming
windstones, *and* getting a chanter to summon vials of mana. Again, I
didn't have easy access to a chanter. I wanted to be as self-reliant as
possible.
Then there was Shadowscream armor. This was by far the cheapest to make,
and wouldn't require anyone to summon or imbue anything. However, it
required a *lot* of farming - lots of no-drop items and some no-rent items
as well. I looked over the requirements, and decided to give it a try.
First things first. I had to spend several hours one evening doing the Shar
Vahl smithing quests. I was running around the newbie fields slaughtering
level 5 monsters for far longer than I'd imagined. Finally, after running a
few Fedex quests and a somewhat interesting timed quest inside Shar Vahl, I
finally had the smithing tools I'd need to make Shadowscream armor. I put a
link to my Humming Luclinite Hammer in /guildsay, and got mostly silence
with one "Whazzat?" Ah well, at least I was happy.
So, then I began trying to farm the items I'd need. Wailing substances
dropped off some owlbears in the Paludial Caverns. Shrieking substances
dropped off sonic wolves in the Tenebrous Mountains. And no-rent Swirling
Shadows dropped off of lesser shades in Shadeweaver's Thicket. I tried
manipulating the Hollowshade Moor war. The theory went that if you could
get either the owlbears or sonic wolves to completely take over the zone,
that race would then take over the fort near Shar Vahl, and the mobs that
spawned at the fort would have the Shrieking and Wailing substances I
craved. So for a week I tried to get this to work - and it never, ever
happened. Sure, I could get once race to take over the whole zone - but
they never went on to take over the fort. And once a race had control of
the zone, you'd never see either of the other two races until the zone was
reset. I spent a lot of time here, trying to get it work, turning down
requests to group. In the end, my only source of Wailing and Shrieking
substances was PC and TM.
A week of slow, tedious farming produced enough items to attempt 17
combines. I got one failure, 16 Shadowscream Bracers - and no skill-ups.
Frustrated, I gated to Qeynos. I got all the items I needed to make a
Salubrious Heraldic Girdle. I put them in the forge, equipped my geerlock,
closed my eyes, and hit combine. Slowly I opened my eyes... and saw that my
cursor was just holding my smithing hammer, which indicated a failure. I
lacked the skill required, etc, etc. Utterly morose, I logged.
In the meantime, PoP came out. The GM smith in our guild had returned,
drawn by the new PoP tradeskills. Three times I sent him tells asking for
help. Once he ninja-logged on me, once he said he was too tired, once he
simply ignored me completely. The message was pretty clear - he was not
interested in making Heraldic armor for me. This was very frustrating. I
was mentally debating whether to give up on the whole thing altogether.
While I was debating it, I joined my guild on a Ssra raid - while I was
turning down grouping requests, I always dropped everything to attend every
raid, as was my duty. Among the mobs we killed was the Creator. This was
the tenth such Creator kill since I'd begun my smithing quest. He was
wielding a Hategiver, but I'd heard that it was still possible for him to
drop the hammer. And so it proved; after he died, his loot was linked and
there it was - Hammer of the Ironfrost. I hadn't realized just how widely
known I'd made my desire for this hammer known until it dropped. Suddenly I
was inundated with tells from my guildmates, wishing me good luck on getting
the Hammer. Almost sheepishly I put in my name for the hammer. Very
quickly I was awarded the hammer by our officers. I ran up, clicked on the
corpse, almost looted the Hategiver by mistake, and grabbed the Hammer of
the Ironfrost. In one fell swoop, my smithing had gone from 188 to 216.
This buoyed me tremendously. It was a great show of support from my guild,
all the way up to the loot council. I girded my loins, so to speak, and
went back to farming Shadowscream. I *had* to make all this effort
worthwhile.
I went back to farming swirling and shrieking substances, and eventually got
enough to try 16 more combines. After farming the associated number of
swirling shadows, I set to the task. One my second combine, I got the
message, "You skill in smithing has improved (189)". Man, what a rush.
Before I was done I got another skill-up, bringing me up to 190. Wow... it
took *weeks* to get from 188 to 190.
I continued to look into alternatives into Shadowscream. I discovered that
there were some new PoP recipes. Specifically, you could take Ethereal
Bricks of Energy and use them to get to 250 by making Ethereal Rings. And
they dropped in quantity in the planes. This excited me tremendously -
until I read further and discovered that SOE had just decided to nerf that.
They had removed the vendor that sold the tea leaves that were required to
make the temper you needed to make the rings. By the time the tea leaf
vendor had been restored, the trivial had been changed to 212 on the
Ethereal Rings - and the minimum skill necessary to even attempt to combine
them was 220.
Still, it was a shortcut. With my Hammer of the Ironfrost, I could get from
193 to 212 making Ethereal Rings. See, 193 plus 15 percent is greater than
the 220 minimum required. And then, according to my research, I could go
from 212 to 220 making Ethereal Sheets of Metal. Awesome. Now all I needed
to do was get from 190 to 193 using Shadowscream.
My research also uncovered another fact. The Hollowshade Moor war could be
manipulated a different way. If you could get the sonic wolves or the
owlbears to take over the southern grimling camp, then the sonic wolves or
owlbears that spawned on the islands on the lake would drop the substances I
needed. I logged on and ran over to Hollowshade Moor. I went to the
southern camp and was excited to see that the sonic wolves had already taken
it over. So I memorized my AE nuke and got about eight sonic wolves around
me. I nuked them - and lo and behold, got two shrieking substances. Woot!
For a while I did a one-man AE group. I got eight or ten wolves to gather
close, then nuked them into nothingness. With KEI, I was able to keep going
at a constant rate, and I averaged two or three substances per group. Then a
good friend of mine, Kayia, logged on and sent me a tell. She has a 51
wizard alt and she was willing to come help. It took some experimentation,
since she had actually never cast an AE nuke before - I actually hadn't
realized the staggering array of nukes that wizards had available to them.
She finally found the right nuke - Super Nova. We experimented with a small
ten-wolf train. When that worked out all right, I ran and aggro'd about
thirty wolves and brought them over to the wizzie. She cast her nuke, and it
was a real pleasure to see them all drop dead.
I continued to play the role of tank-puller. Aggroing these wolves is hard
work - they wouldn't always just aggro me if I ran by. I'd have to stop and
either whack them with my hammer or wait for them to notice me - which of
course gave the wolves I'd already aggro'd time to catch up and beat on me.
I determined that thirty wolves was about my limit before they became a
serious threat to my health. There's nothing like getting stunned in the
water and then being surrounded by dozens of wolves. Still, I was able to
manage some pretty good pulls. I'd average six substances per group of
thirty sonic wolves, and the islands spawn relatively quickly, which meant
as soon as I was done looting one group I could go pull more.
I forced myself to stay up late to take advantage of Kayia's generous help,
and in the end I managed to loot 82 shrieking substances. I promised her
something good when I got my smithing maxed. She admitted she had fun and
was now sorely tempted to level her wizard up so she could take part in some
real AE groups.
The owlbears, however, were completely wiped out, and the zone wasn't due to
be reset for a while. I petitioned a few times asking for the zone to be
reset, but never ever got a reply. So I had to use Paludial Caverns.
There's a four-mob spawn of grimy owlbear cubs deep in Paludial Caverns that
dropped the wailing substances. I could often be found there, waiting for
the cubs to spawn, nuking them out of existence, looting them, and waiting.
Fortunately the people who were XP-ing in the zone never came down there, so
I was glad not to have to worry about competition for the camp. Once, while
waiting for a rez after a raid wipe, I quickly ran to the camp and nuked the
cubs. Usually I'd get one drop from the four cubs, sometimes two, sometimes
zero. That time, for the first time ever, all four cubs dropped a wailing
substance. That was a nice boost. I now had 21 wailing substances and
decided it was time for another round of Shadowscream.
The next day I went to Shadeweaver's Thicket and began killing lesser shades
for their swirling shadows. I quickly grew tired of it - it would take me
forever to farm 42 swirling shadows. I'd also read that swirling shadows
drop off of lesser and greater shadows in the Twilight Sea. So I gated back
to the Nexus, bought a KEI, and used the taxi channel to get a ride to TS. I
used Sense Undead to quickly find the island. The shadows conned green to
me, so I loaded up my 1100 dd nuke. One nuke took them down to one-third
health, after which I'd switch to my summoned hammer and melee them to
death. The mobs would lifetap me, but I could keep well ahead of them and
heal myself afterwards. The first one I killed dropped *two* swirling
shadows. And there were lots of shadows, all confined to this relatively
tiny island. Merrily I began killing the shadows and getting lots of
swirling shadows. These guys had an annoying lifetap proc but I was easily
able to overcome it...
...until the *named* shadow popped.
This green mob just beat me silly. I could get his health down only so much,
then he'd lifetap himself back up to full. My 1100dd nuke, when I could cast
it without getting interrupted, would only drop him down to half health, and
he'd promptly lifetap himself back up. Finally, I turn and swam towards
Katta, quite grateful for my 200 swimming skill. I did manage to outrun the
named, but when I tried to go back to the island he was waiting for me. I
swam again, this time more slowly so he would follow, then took him to the
guards at the Katta zone line. Alas, the guards just looked blithely on as
he continued to put the smack-down on me. Fortunately, a 40ish shaman
wandered by. He healed me, then hasted me. Then a warrior happened by and he
waded in. With their help the named shadow died quickly, and I was very
grateful for the assistance I received.
Eventually I got the 42 shadows. I gated back to the Plane of Knowledge and
set up to do 21 combines of Shadowscream armor. My goal was to get one
skill-up. I'd been averaging one skill-up per twenty combines, so I was
hopeful.
I got a skill-up on my very first combine.
I relaxed, and finished all the combines. To my amazement, I got *three*
more skill-ups. My smithing was now 194.
Now I could move on to Ethereal Energy Rings. I'd need ethereal energy
bricks - and my guild, which continued to be supportive, had been feeding me
EE bricks. However, I also needed Ethereal Temper. This required a brewer
with a skill of 220 to make. And I'd need hundreds of tempers.
Brewing, hmm.
I'd come to realize how... inconvenient it was to depend on others to help
you with tradeskilling. How often could you find a chanter willing to sit
for hours enchanting bricks of ore or summoning vials of mana for you? And
who could I ask to spend days making Ethereal Temper for me? Heck, who did I
even know who was a grandmaster brewer?
So, in the name of self-reliance, I decided to see if I could work on
brewing. I already had a 143 brewing skill from working on other parts of
the Heraldic armor I wanted. I checked the online recipes. I definitely did
not want to be caught in another endeavor that would require tons of
farming. Hmm... Minotaur Hero's Brew has a trivial of 248. And all of its
components can be store-bought. In fact, they can all be bought in
Shadowhaven. Like, wow.
So off the SH I went. This became a true clickfest - Minotaur Hero's Brew is
a *nine*-item combine. Two flasks of water, yeast, two short beers, a cask,
and three malts combined over and over and over again. I spent hours and
hours doing this and my hand became quite cramped. I took a couple of breaks
to help with PoJ trials, and at one point I stopped in the bazaar and found
a Brewing Geerlock for sale that would add 5% to my brewing skill. It only
cost 50pp and would save me a lot of time getting skill-ups.
In the end, after two days' effort, I hit 210 - which, when you add five
percent to it, gave me the 220 I need to do Ethereal Temper. It was with
considerable relief that I backed away from the still and sold all my
brewing stuff. I would never have thought that the first tradeskill I would
get over 200 would be brewing. And I never thought it would be so easy to
get *any* tradeskill over 200 - all the items were incredibly cheap, costing
just silver or gold. If only smithing were this easy.
In case you're wondering, it is now possible to get more than one tradeskill
above 200. I would need to spend 3 AA points to allow another tradeskill
above 200, but it was worth it to me. Now I could make all the temper I need
to enable any smithing I wish to do.
So began my Ethereal Energy Rings phase. I bought a collapsible mortar and
pestle, and would spam my group with combines making celestial essences
during raid preparations. I even discovered that I could do combines while
auto-following someone. Celestial tempers were easy, since everything was
store-bought. Ethereal energy bricks were slightly harder because I was
still doing mostly raiding and not much grouping. But I found EE bricks for
sale in the bazaar. So I quickly fell into a rhythm: after the day's raids,
I'd head to the bazaar, buy a stack or two of EE bricks if the price was
reasonable, then go to PoK and do some combines. Over the course of a few
weeks (taking time off for Christmas), I got my skill up to 212 before the
EE Rings became trivial. That meant that my skill was now 243 with my
Hammer of the Ironfrost.
I began to set up for Ethereal Sheets of Metal. Alas, though, EQtraders had
updated their web page. Turns out the trivial on the Sheets of Metal was
212, not 220 as previously listed. D'oh. I had gone as high as Ethereal
Energy bricks could take me. I'd have to go back to Shadowscream to get
from 212 to 220. At 220, my effective skill would be 253, which current
theory states is the maximum adjusted skill you can have (some believe it's
255, and SOE ain't saying).
Still, my current adjusted skill of 243 seemed pretty high. I decided to
try some Heraldic combines. I began assembling the materials, which took a
while - I'd forgotten just how many sub-combines were required. After a
while, I had enough items to try two combines. I imbued two opals and
bought two plate belt molds. I threw everything into the Qeynos forge, hit
combine... and failed. I sighed, put everything in for the second attempt,
closed my eyes, and clicked on combine again. Very slowly I opened them...
and my cursor was holding a belt.
Woo hoo!
I linked it to my guild, and got many grats. Happily I equipped it, and
began wondering what else I could do with my new skills.
A day later in the bazaar, someone was advertising for a human GM smith.
243 wasn't exactly GM, but it was pretty close, I thought. I sent her a
tentative tell, explaining that I would be glad to help. She had all the
stuff for some Fierce Heraldic armor, she just wanted me to hit combine for
her. We dickered on the price, and agreed that I would keep one of the
successful combines to sell.
Off we went to Qeynos. She indeed handed me all the correct items,
including the imbued jade, and then handed me two breastplate molds. I put
in everything and hit combine - and was successful. I tried another
breastplate, and was successful a second time. She had me make a few more
things - bracers, vambraces, a helm. I had a very good run, only failing
twice when we tried to make greaves. We were both happy with the results.
My first customer! I put the BP up for sale, and it took a couple of days
but I got 30K for it.
Suddenly I was getting tells from friends, guildmates, and complete
strangers. =) I tried to accommodate all of them. My friends I only asked
to give me the gems necessary. For a cleric friend I made a Luminant
Heraldic Breastplate, for a guildmate I made some Fierce Heraldic pieces. I
advertised once in the Bazaar, and one guy responded, wanting me to make him
a complete set of Fetid Heraldic armor. I think I gave him a bargain - he
had to pay me 60K and a Fungi Tunic - but I also got two skill-ups while
doing his combines, bringing me up to 214 raw and 246 adjusted.
I now have over 100K in the bank for the first time ever. Suddenly all the
months and mouse-clicks and lost XP seems almost worthwhile. Plus I've
become a good resource for my guild when they need anything from a filleting
knife to ethereal sheets of metal. Like I've said before, I enjoy helping
people.
I still want to get my raw skill up to 220. Now that I'm rich, I think I'm
gonna forget Shadowscream (thankfully) and try Mistletoe Sickles. I can
probably hire a Cleric of Tunare to imbue a few hundred emeralds for me if I
offer them 10K. =)
I think I'm done with working on new tradeskills for a long, long time
(although I may make a one-night pottery run, since my skill is only 103 and
those failures making blue diamond powder *hurt*). I'm still only 63 and I
don't even have MGB - I'm certain I'd be 65 with many AA's if I hadn't begun
this smithing quest.
But now I'm a GM smith and have unlimited income potential. I feel pretty
good about that. It's amazing, though, how these things begin - a simple
post by a guildmate saying that everyone should get Heraldic armor triggered
a chain of events that eventually became a minor obsession that consumed
months of my time. Then again, that pretty much describes Everquest,
doesn't it? ^_^
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
High Priest of Rodcet Nife - Human Grandmaster Blacksmith
Winter's Light
Drinal server
This page is Copyright by Skaarak; Everquest (TM) is property of Sony Online Entertainment
All stories and art work are Copyright@ by the origial owner/writer.
Most, if not all stories, were taken from newsgroup alt.games.everquest (AGE), I recommend that anyone who gets a chance to read it should!